Right Time to Right-Size Your Home

Big corporations and governments are doing it. Now it’s time for people to do it to their homes. Right-sizing is not a euphemism for downsizing, but rather a process for making your home fit they way you live. Many of us are residing in the past while living in the present.

Do you really use your living room?

Is your dining room a walk-through space on the way to elsewhere?

Do you need space for really work at home?

How many miles do you walk in your kitchen to fix a festive meal?

I urge you to come clean about how you really use your home. For example, a foyer is superfluous space when the main entry is through the mud room or garage. Similarly, the oversized great room of the 1990s – which morphed from separate rooms for eating, entertaining and preparing food – doesn’t work for every family. Gathering areas must incorporate many functions today: TV viewing, eating, homework, reading or game playing. The dining room that gets used three times a year should be repurposed. And for many of us, one home office may simply not be enough anymore in this economy.

Right-sizing should enable you to live efficiently, flexibly, sustainably and best of all, comfortably

My new book is not a decorating book. It will lead you into re-thinking your daily life inside your home. Suddenly, you will be analyzing how a room is used today, not a generation ago. There are how-to worksheets to assess personal living style. Discover checklists, trade-offs and dimensions information, money-saving and time-saving advice as well as an extensive resource list, even a source list on where to donate furniture and furnishings.

The most important tool to right-sizing is an attitude re-adjustment. Having an open mind and willingness to rethink and reinvent space will almost certainly bring big rewards as you discover space you never knew you have. Don’t focus on resale. That was so yesterday. Right-sizing is the solution for today.